I think this is the second step, although tomorrow I might think something else. After we have heard someone......maybe even God.....speaking to us, we need to listen. Intentionally. Listen to exactly what is being said. Pay attention. Give heed.
When my children were still in school I would often ask (as do most parents) "Do you have any homework?" I always heard the answer; I rarely listened to the answer on the first pass. Just ask my children; I would ask this same question two or three times over the course of an evening.
I wasn't attentive to their message. I never really took in what they were trying to tell me. It was all blah, blah, blah, blah to me (and frustrating to my children, I might add).
So a second task of our Advent work is to listen.
Mary, Joseph and Zechariah (father of John the Baptizer) all had an angel appear with a message for them, and I would probably have listened the first time around if an angel appeared to me. In the Bible, angels are messengers who bring messages from God to mortals. Their first words are inevitably, "Do not be afraid" which leads me to believe that they were fairly scary to begin with. We could reasonably conclude that the message God had for these folk was so important an angel was sent to deliver it.
Or......possibly, the appearance of an angel with such important messages is an indicator that we mortals are not really good at listening. God sends an angel to ensure our attention.
You and I rarely get a glimpse of these kinds of angels - the scary, fall on the ground, 'what's going to happen next' kind of angel. God sends us more ordinary angels - folks around us who bring us messages like 'love your neighbor' or ' live generously, you have more than you need' or 'feed the hungry'. Perhaps if God sent these messages along with a solid Gabriel or Michael (the two archangels) we would pay more attention. Perhaps.
It is too easy to hear but not listen. In these days of Advent, let us intentionally listen for God's message to us.....a message from God......to us. Just like Mary, Joseph, Zechariah and a whole host of other important folk in the Bible. Listen for God's message to you. I assure you, angel or no angel, it is important.
"Come, my children,listen to me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord." Psalm 34.11
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